Robert Roger Lebel, MD
This man has a happy habit. Look at the daffodil in the breast pocket of his white lab coat. Today, it’s a daffodil. Tomorrow, the pocket may hold a carnation or a tulip or something else.
Robert Roger Lebel, MD wears a different flower every day. It’s something he started doing as a third-year medical student at the University of Wisconsin Medical School (where he graduated in 1982.) He heard stories of a long-departed faculty member who wore a fresh flower every day. He liked the idea, so he resurrected the trend as he began clinical rotations.
Today he works in Upstate’s Center for Development, Behavior and Genetics, and he does not usually wear a lab coat seeing patients. But he wears it the rest of his day, teaching and during meetings. “It causes smiles to break out in the hallways as you’re walking along,” he says.
Typically he purchases a floral bouquet each week, enjoying it either at home or in the office, choosing one bloom to place in a vial of water to ride around in his pocket at the start of each day.
If you see him in the hallways, be sure to give Lebel a smile.
